OLIVER GOLDSMITH:

A BIOGRAPHY.

BY

WASHINGTON IRVING.

NEW-YORK:

G. P. PUTNAM & COMPANY, 10 PARK PLACE.

PS

2050
1852
501791
v.ll

SIX
AUG 24 30

ENTERED, according to Act of Congress, in the year 1848, by
WASHINGTON IRVING,

in the Clerk's Office of the District Court for the Southern Distric of New-York.

JOHN F. TROW,

Printer and Stereotyper
49 Ann-street, NY

CONTENTS.

CHAPTER I.

Birth and parentage.-Characteristics of the Goldsmith race.--Poetical birth.

place. Goblin house.-Scenes of boyhood.-Lissoy.--Picture of a country

parson.-Goldsmith's schoolmistress.-Byrne, the village schoolmaster.—

Goldsmith's hornpipe and epigram.-Uncle Contarine.-School studies and

school sports.-Mistakes of a night,.

. 17

CHAPTER II.

Improvident marriages in the Goldsmith family.-Goldsmith at the university.—

Situation of a sizer.-Tyranny of Wilder, the tutor.-Pecuniary straits.—

Street ballads.-College riot.-Gallows Walsh.-College prize.-A dance

interrupted,

30

CHAPTER III.

Goldsmith rejected by the bishop.-Second sally to see the world.-Takes

passage for America.-Ship sails without him.-Return on Fiddle-back. -

A hospitable friend.-The counsellor,

45

CHAPTER IV.

Sallies forth as a law student.-Stumbles at the outset.-Cousin Jane and the

valentine.-A family oracle.-Sallies forth as a student of medicine.-

Hocus-pocus of a boarding-house.—Transformations of a leg of mutton.—

The mock ghost.-Sketches of Scotland.-Trials of Toryism.-A poet's

purse for a Continental tour, .

53

CHAPTER V.

The agreeable fellow-passengers.-Risks from friends picked up by the way-

side.--Sketches of Holland and the Dutch.-Shifts while a poor student at

Leyden. The tulip speculation.-The provident flute.--Sojourn at Paris.-

Sketch of Voltaire.--Travelling shifts of a philosophic vagabond,

66

CHAPTER VI.

Landing in England.-Shifts of a man without money.-The pestle and

mortar.-Theatricals in a barn.-Launch upon London.-A city night

scene. Struggles with penury.-- Miseries of a tutor.-A doctor in the

suburb.--Poor practice and second-hand finery.—A tragedy in embryo.--

Project of the written mountains,

77

CHAPTER VII.

Life of a pedagogue.-Kindness to schoolboys-pertness in return.-Expensive

charities. The Griffiths and the "Monthly Review."-Toils of a literary

hack.-Rupture with the Griffiths,

84

CHAPTER VIII.

Newbery, of picture-book memory.-How to keep up appearances.-Miseries

of authorship.-A poor relation.-Letter to Hodson,

89

CHAPTER IX.

Hackney authorship.-Thoughts of literary suicide.-Return to Peckham.-

Oriental projects.-Literary enterprise to raise funds.-Letter to Edward

Wells-to Robert Bryanton.-Death of uncle Contarine.-Letter to cousin

Jane,

. 97